[RTTY] PSK Article in QST

[aa5au at bellsouth.net]

Andy is correct on his observations.  PSK is an important DX mode.  There have been several "new ones" for me which were worked on PSK because the operator did not operate RTTY.  VK0M Macquarie comes to mind.  My first ever digital contact with VU4 was a PSK31 contact which I don't believe could have made on RTTY.  I know there are some that are diehard RTTY ops that want all their entities worked on RTTY, but if you are serious about getting to the Honor Roll, you'll need to get on PSK!

While tuning for a YU8 station on digital, it's so easy to sit on 7035 with one radio and monitor multiple PSK signals with Digipan.  If a YU8 shows up, I'll see it.

BTW, YU8NU was spotted on 7036.4 PSK earlier today by a JA station.

WFWL!

73, Don AA5AU



-------------- Original message from "Andrew O'Brien" <andrewobrie at gmail.com>: -------------- 


> You have to be careful about sweeping generalizations in this matter, 
> but I think I can add some measurable observations. PSK31 is by far 
> the most used digital mode for the average non-contesting amateur 
> radio contact. If one simply fires up the multiple channel 
> capabilities of Multipsk (or other similar software) and parks the 
> rig on 7035 or 14070, you will decode dozens of active QSOs in PSK. 
> If you do the same in RTTY mode and scan the RTTY frequency ranges on 
> 40M and 20M during a non contest, you will often find NO RTTY stations 
> for periods in excess of 30 minutes. As a basic "rag-chew" mode, RTTY 
> is not dead but it is less used these days that Hellschreiber (sp?) , 
> ALE, or MFSK16. 
> 
> For contesting, I can affirm Bill's speculation. The contest logs 
> for RTTY versus PSK31 (or PSK63) are NO CONTEST, RTTY has far more 
> entrants per contest than PSK31. While RTTY does not perform as 
> robustly as some other digital modes, it is a tried and trusted mode 
> that contesters do not wish to give up. 
> 
> Andy K3UK 
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